S02E10 Blank Peng, Mandarin speaker - From Fujian province, China đšđł
Making headway to big comedy clubsâ paid spots within two years of arriving in the UK, Blank got into almost all the major Comedy New Act Competition finals and collected gong show wins like a dedicated Pokemon player collecting the Poke gym badges.
âBlank is an incognito bilingual stand-up comic,â so goes her comedy profile on some of Londonâs top comedy clubsâ websites. It is not by accident sheâs named Blank; itâs a deliberate choice of a stage name to keep her quite literally incognito - for understandable reasons, given part of Blankâs stand up incudes commentary on her native China. Your host to this day does not know her full real name in Mandarin.
Blank shares a more nuanced picture of her home countryâs censorship on the burgeoning stand up comedy scene, how comedians work with the script pre-approval compliance requirements and why places like her more obscure provinceâs scene allows more leeway.
Having started performing stand up comedy in Mandarin first (and already doing very well), Blank is one of the fewer guests of this podcast who did not start performing in English. Instead, she had to transition into an English stand up comedy performer. She talks about why her Mandarin and English jokes are separate and why she is happy to stick to just English stand up comedy in the UK, despite the growing number of Chinese students and immigrants.
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Follow Blank on Instagram
Follow your host Kuan-wen on Instagram
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00:57 Bonus episode in Mandarin
01:25 Intro
02:24 A Chinese national considered having a Taiwanese accent?
04:00 More British than American influences
05:31 Unsolicited feedback on her accent from audience members
06:12 Mandarin stand up comedy performer before English stand up
08:34 Coming from a âthird-rateâ Chinese city
10:54 Comedy New Act Competitions and Gong Shows
13:40 Comedy censorship in China
22:12 Turning into a more unique performer in the UK
23:17 Separate comedy materials between Mandarin and English stand up
24:56 Blankâs stage persona in Mandarin stand up
26:29 Ethnic minority comedy performers and hack jakes
31:05 Blankâs racially self-deprecating jokes and the principle of fairness
32:20 No longer performing Mandarin stand up in the UK
35:51 Why âBlankâ?
36:40 Why âBlank404â for Instagram>
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Podcast intro music by @Taigenkawabe
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